The Traveling Mask
by Tuna Salad Sonnet
Summary: The story of the Blue Spirit, it's mask, and everyone it's affected. [Oneshot. My attempt at BluePaint that morphed into something slightly different.] [Vague Taang, Smellershot, and Zutara]


**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Avatar: The Last Airbender _or any related characters. This was written out of enjoyment of the series, and no profit is being made.

_**Ships: **_(Romance) Mentions: Toph/Aang, Smellerbee/Lonshot, Blue Spirit/Painted Lady. (Friendship) Mentions: Zuko/Lu Ten, Zuko/Aang, Zuko/Ty Lee, Sokka/Aang, Freedom Fighters  
_**Theories/Speculation: **_Jet Lives!; Ty Lee is an Airbender/Air Nomad; Jin is a Spy for the Dai Le; Blue Spirit Legend; (brief) Painted Lady Legend  
_**Warnings: **_Mentioning of deaths, spoilers up to Episode 43 - "The Painted Lady"?

* * *

**The Traveling Mask**

The legend of the Blue Spirit begins many hundred years ago in the Water Tribes. It's not known if the story started at the North Pole or the South, but either way, it started in the snow and ice.

x

The story of the Blue Spirit went like this: one year, as the winter months approached, and the lines between the Material World and the Spirit World became blurrier, a young spirit of the Night wandered into the mountains of our world. He found himself on the peaks of the Western Air Temple, close to the sky and near midnight.

Still in his misty blue unseen form, he wandered about one of the high hills where he could see the temples on the nearby mountains. He wandered through the high grasses and flowers and watched the windows, all the time wondering what might be happening within. Wandering was what he did, because he was of the Night. Not of the Stars, or the Shadows, but of the coolness of the Night Winds. He was lonely, and so he wandered.

Suddenly, he heard singing from somewhere on the hill, carried by the winds to him. Curious, he followed the sound, until he came upon a female air nomad, sitting on a log in the middle of the field. He came closer, and saw that she was braiding chains of flowers, flowers he knew had powerful healing properties.

She was a gentle nurse, and he felt at that moment he wanted nothing more than to be healed of his loneliness by her presence.

When the winter solstice came, he traveled into the real world in physical form, as spirits are allowed to do then. He went as a crane, blue and white and noble and lonely, and he flew to the hill near the Western Air Temple and he found her.

He walked the slow, graceful steps cranes take until he was close enough for her to notice. Her gray eyes looked upon him, and he had never felt so warm. No Night Wind had ever been so warm. He waltzed up, and she stroked his feathers, softly, gently, like air rippling water. She sang to him of the world and all of it's people and all of it's good. He left behind a long, flowing tail feather before taking off at the end of the night.

The next night when he visited again, the nurse had a brought a friend, a bison shepherdess. The friend had brought a sick pup, whom the nurse helped treat with the flowers. They talked gently of soft things, and he felt guilty of eavesdropping. But then he heard the word, "crane." He watched as the nurse pulled the feather from the middle of the hollow log.

x

Nobody knows how the story truly ends. There are at least three versions: the Water, the Earth, and the Fire Endings.

Nobody much remembers the Water or the Earth versions. All that is known is that a writer from the Earth Kingdom heard the tale and turned it into an opera. The people of the Water Tribes who saw it complained that the ending was nothing like the original. Still, it gained a huge amount of popularity, and received a nearly full house every night. But nobody remembers how it ended. It was too long ago.

That was all ruined when the Fire Nation took over Taku, the village where the opera first began. The mask the male lead used over his face was stolen, and presented to the Fire Lord as proof of the successful capture of another village.

To replace the mask, a new story of the Blue Spirit began. It went like this: the nurse was killed in the Fire Nation raids of the Air Temple, and the Blue Spirit swore vengeance. He appears with the cool night winds, and strikes only on the greedy, unrighteous souls in the name of good a nurse sang to him many years ago.

x

Fire Lord Sozin was unimpressed by a metal mask. He ordered it to be discarded. A quiet noblewomen named Ilah, who was to become the future Fire Lady to his son Azulon, saved it and tucked it away. She passed it on to her daughter-in-law, Ursa, who in turn, passed it to her nephew, Lu Ten.

x

He had been seven when Lu Ten had invited him into his room. He looked around through his bright gold eyes at the flags and crests and parchments but was drawn back to where Lu Ten sat grinning at him. Zuko smiled. He hoped he'd be as cool as his cousin when he was older.

"I want you to keep something safe for me, cous," he said. He reached under one of his pillows and brought out a white messily-wrapped package, the paper sticking out at odd angles and string wrapped around it a billion times. Zuko came forward and took it gently in his tiny hands.

"It goes back a long time," Lu Ten said. "Back longer than our great-grandfather."

Zuko peeled the paper and string away hurriedly, but he slowed as he brushed the stainless steel of the mask. His fingers traced the grinning teeth and the ridges of the eyes. He blinked back up at his cousin in young wonder. He knew this was no sort of ordinary gift.

"Your mom gave it too me, but it's secret," he grinned mysteriously and put a finger to his lips, "so don't tell anyone. Not even her."

Zuko paused, then grinned, then nodded. "I promise, cous."

"Good boy," Lu Ten said, and pulled his favourite little cousin into a loving noogie.

x

The story of the Blue Spirit had been dead for years when he came to life again and helped the young Avatar escape from an impenetrable Fire Nation fortress.

Aang wondered if a human took the guise of a spirit, if it was any less of a spirit. He heard from Sokka a couple weeks later the story of the Blue Spirit, the story of a spirit who seeked to right wrongs, to love.

It only made him even more confused. But he never regretted his offer for friendship. Never.

x

Toph heard the legend in the streets of Ba Sing Se. Whispers in the shadows of a spirit in a mask who stole over the kingdom. She asked Aang about it that night, as he stared out the window imagining the clouds were bisons. He needed a distraction from his daydream.

He's only too glad to tell her of the spirit who saved him.

x

The Blue Spirit was supposed to die. Zuko knew that. Iroh knew that. The waves swallowed him up and he _died._

But Smellerbee and Longshot didn't know that.

Longshot carried their dying leader out into the open air through a passageway they prayed would work. It did.

It was the dead of night by the time they snuck back into the Lower Ring. Smellerbee pounded and pounded on every back door she could find, Longshot trailing behind with Jet on his back. Every so often, she'd run back and check on them, and Jet kept breathing.

He wouldn't give up. (He never could just _drop_ anything could he?)

Finally, one door opened where all the others had shrunk back in fear of the Dai Le. A girl with soft brown hair in braids opened the door curiously. Before she could shut the door, Smellerbee babbled out the whole story and the girl's eyes widened upon seeing the injured Jet. She told them to come in and that she was going to get help. She ran past a man in an apron and told him she was getting someone named Estrella.

The man cleared a space in one of the back rooms of the shop for the injured Jet. A couple minutes later, the girl named Estrella came into the shop followed by the braided girl and an older man.

x

Jin slid open the screen separating the rooms. Smellerbee and Longshot sat in the main tea-room at one of the tables. She walked up to them.

"Is he alright?" Smellerbee asked hoarsely.

"Not right now, but she's working," Jin replied. "Do you two like tea? I could make some while you're waiting."

They glanced at each other. Longshot nodded solemnly.

Jin nodded and walked behind the counter. "What's your order?"

"Uh..." Smellerbee looked at her companion. (Tea wasn't a usual part of Freedom Fighter diet.)

"The best tea you have," Longshot said quietly.

Jin shuffled around in the kitchen and sat at the table with three cups of tea. "The three of you have know each other for a long time. Am I right?"

They nodded and sipped the hot tea. "It's a long story," Smellerbee offered in explanation. To change the subject, "So...how'd you meet this Estrella person?"

She shrugged. "I just sort of met her when I saw her on the streets. Her mom and dad died when she was little, so her aunt and uncle adopted her. Her aunt gave birth just before they got into the city, so she was out walking with her little cousin Hope to give Yin a break."

Smellerbee nodded tersely. "And she's a nurse?"

"Yeah, Estrella's mom was taught by this crazy herbalist lady, and she passed it down to her."

The trio glanced at the screen, where they could hear Estrella, her uncle Than, and the owner of the tea shop working furiously with tea leaves, herbs, and bandages.

Jin turned back to them. "Do you guys need somewhere to sleep tonight? I can probably spare some room at my house."

The paused, looked at each other again.

"That sounds great," Longshot whispered.

x

The next night, at some ungodly hour, Estrella emerged from behind the screen wiping her hands on a white towel, turning it red.

"I've fixed him up. He'll need lots of water and rest. But you can talk to him. Tell me if he says anything."

Longshot and Smellerbee grinned for the first time since Jin had ever seen them and disappeared behind the screen. The tea shop owner and Than emerged. Than and Estrella proclaimed that they were going home, and the tea shop owner said that he was going out back to get some fresh air.

Jin waved as uncle and niece left and watched the owner go out back. She glanced at the screen and smiled, hearing Smellerbee and Longshot's overjoyed voices at seeing their fixed up friend.

She glanced at the notched candle burning in the corner. She opened the front door. Sure enough, her Dai Le superior was there.

"Evening, Jin." He tipped his hat.

"Good evening," she said. _Charade,_ she thought. _It's easy._

"Anything to report?"

"Nothing."

"Anything about that Mushi and his nephew Lee?"

"Nope."

"That boy who caused a ruckus here the other night?"

"Haven't heard of them since then."

"Alright then. As you were, Jin."

He leaps off into the night and she closes the door. Immediatly, she remembers her studies of the sewer system, and imagined what a journey through them would be like for two Freedom Fighters carrying someone on a stretcher.

x

Three, four. She could do better.

Smellerbee picked up another rock and skimmed it over the lake surface. If Longshot knew where she had been taking her breathers, he would've killed her. But the constant smell of tea was driving her nuts, and she needed to pace somewhere other than behind a counter.

Jet was fine. He just wouldn't wake up. She kept coming back to the lake in the hopes that something would stir his dark memories of it and wake him up.

Crunch. She looked down. A mask. On the shore of a lake?

She picked it up and turned it around. Much too big for _her_ face. But...

She kneeled down and sloshed it back and forth in the water, then held it up. The water took a while to drain from the narrow eye holes, and if she held it right, it could almost pass as a water bowl.

x

Smellerbee knew it wasn't as good a bowl as the actual wooden bowl they had been using, or even Longshot's hat, which they had tried. But this mask seemed to_ know_ so much more than either of those two vessels.

They didn't know what spirit answered their prayers that night. Maybe it was the Blue Spirit himself. (More likely the airbender nurse.)

Jet swallowed, gulped down the water as though it was the only thing he had ever done. Smellerbee kept pouring water down his chin, Jin cried tears of joy as she watched from the corner. By the end of the night, Jet could smile and talk, but was too weak to open his eyes, like a baby animal too young to see the world.

Longshot wiped his girl's cheeks, and red face paint smeared off on his bandaged hands.

x

They escaped the city before it was captured (and all thanks to a girl who studied sewer systems). They snuck through the forests like the thieves they were. Thieves, shadows, spirits, like the mask.

Longshot averted his eyes politely as Smellerbee tore a strip from her shirt...and smacked his leader on the head with a stick when he found _he _hadn't. "Joking, joking Longshot! She's like my sister! Ow!"

Jet polished off the sand and the dirt and the grime before they tied it to a piece of drift wood using the ripped pieces of their clothing. They carved into the wood: "Long Live the Blue Spirit."

They set it into the waves and watched it go. Then they disappeared into the forest again, to wait and watch and listen for it's call to battle.

x

Ty Lee found the driftwood on the shores of the secret river. The wind blew the hair out of her face, and made her smile the way only the wind could. It was quite lonely without Azula or Mai to talk to. If only the wind could sing to her like it could to airbenders. Walking barefoot down the shore, she spotted something gleaming, something stuck on a rock up ahead.

She bent down and unhooked the driftwood from the rock's point.

She untied the red cloth from around the wood.

She lifted the metal mask from it's surface.

She glanced back down at the wood.

Protected by the bandage and the mask was the message: "Long Live the Blue Spirit."

She looked back at the mask. It grinned at her.

She smiled. She tucked the driftwood under her arm and hid the mask in her cloak.

As she walked back to the palace, she heard words in the wind. She sang along.

x

"Zuko."

He whirled, drew his broadswords, and faced her. She smiled ironically. He was scared.

"You'll want this."

She ignored his slight glare and opened the lidded box held under her arm. She took out the piece of driftwood and handed it to him. After coming back to the palace, she had cut the quote out of the wood clumsily. She could paralyze the best and the brightest with her fists, but she never felt right handling knives. (She was a vegetarian.)

His eyes widened as he read the quote, and when he finally looked back up into her eyes she knew it was time.

She took the mask out from it's box prison and handed it to him.

Zuko brushed the stainless steel of the mask. His fingers traced the grinning teeth and the ridges of the eyes. He blinked back up at the girl in wonder.

"I'll cover you," was all she said.

His hands shook, and then he was hugging her so tightly her feet left the ground.

"Thank you," he whispered into her ear.

And then he was gone.

She smiled. She bent down, picked up the peice of driftwood, and put it back carefully into the box. She shut the lid quietly, but nobody but shadows watched her.

x

The Blue Spirit was afraid that he would come to an end by the mercy of a lake again.

The figure in the blue mask stood at the edge of the roof. Five fire nation soldiers stood, battle stances ready, eager to collect thier reward. Jumping into the lake would be a good idea, but he felt that as soon as he did, they'd snare him in a net like the Water Tribe spirit he was.

He looked over their faces. Nobody moved. Except one woman.

The woman on the far right kept glancing behind him, out over the lake. Finally, her gaze was fixed out there, and her face became stony. Her gaze and impending stillness spread over the group until the spirit himself felt it safe to turn and look.

A figure stood out on the lake, leaving a cloud of mist behind her. She walked closer, slowly and with drawn out steps like a crane wading in the shallows. A cloak and hat and stripes like red scars on her shoulders. A wide brimmed hat that hid her face.

But she looked up, looked up at _him_ standing there, smiled, and opened her arms. She was welcoming him.

He hesitated, then threw all his senses away and trusted (_and let a hand touch his scar_) and he jumped.

The fire soldiers were quickly forgotten. The lake rose to meet him, and he was afraid he'd sink down and down again.

But he learned that with the Painted Lady you need not worry. You can stand on water with her.

x

He walked shakily with her down the river, the river that weaved into the lake.

"I've heard your story," she said. He thought for a second that her voice was rather silly, maybe even familiar, but he had never heard a spirit speak, so who said it couldn't be her real voice?

"You're a Spirit from the Water Tribe. You fell in love with an airbender, and swore revenge on Evil when she died."

"I've heard yours," he said, and his voice took on another hue. A deep blue-black like the night. "You are a Spirit from the Fire Nation. Your fiancé died from poisoned river water, so you became a River Spirit in the Afterlife."

She walked softly, slowly, calmly, not slipping once. He had a harder time walking on slips of ice.

"Is this about my story or yours?" He asked.

"Neither. It's about a whole new one." She stopped, and looked up into the mask, and he saw the crescent on her forehead.

Her voice was the same colour as the crescent: pale yellow and oddly warm against the purples and the blues and the reds.

"You're a healer?" There's his voice: blue and black, but maybe a little silvery white leaking in.

"Yes."

And then he didn't feel like an actor or a vagabond or a rogue. He was a _spirit_ who wanted to be healed of a lonely heart. But this was no airbender woman, and these weren't the hills near the Western Air Temple.

This was here. This was now.

"You...where do we go now?" She asked.

"I don't know," he said. "But we'll meet again. I know that."

"I know." She took his hand.

It's a strange feeling, walking on water holding hands with a legend made real. It felt right.

At some point they stopped walking on the river. The walked through the forest until they came to an open field. He slipped his hand out of hers. She didn't protest. She walked back to the forest, and he walked out into the field. He started climbing a hill.

The stars twinkled up here. He looked back.

The Painted Lady stood at the edge of the forest, her cloak of mist floating around her.

He smiled behind the mask. They were going to need to add a new chapter to this story.

* * *

**AN.** Nothing really intresting to say today, except this thing has been in the works for _far_ too long.

Other than that, Taku is the ruined town the Gaang visited in "The Blue Spirit". And Estrella is the woman that was traveling with Hope's parents. She's not actually supposed to be his niece: according to she's actually his sister. But she's nameless and doesn't speak in canon anyway, so...whatever.

Also, parts of this seemed sorta off to me...so constructive criticism would be awesome if you feel this needs it. :D


End file.
